


Futures

by effectaffect



Category: Aldnoah.Zero (Anime & Manga)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-30
Packaged: 2019-02-20 04:16:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13138881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/effectaffect/pseuds/effectaffect
Summary: After everything, life continues— time passes like a wave crashing relentlessly against the shores of Earth and Mars alike.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Himmelreich](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Himmelreich/gifts).



Yagarai’s little palmtop chirped at him, and he rose apologetically from the table. “Finish my coffee,” he told Marito, “I have to go deliver a baby.”  
Marito managed not to spit his own coffee or snort it out his nose only by swallowing hard, scalding the back of his throat in a way that was completely unlike the pleasant burn of whiskey. “What the hell,” Marito said to the device in his hand, buzzing insistently until he answered, “Kaizuka the younger?”  
“Sir,” Inaho said, his voice smooth and cool but lacking its usual distance despite the comm link. “I need to take time.”  
“I get it. I’ll cover for you. Areash is still on your sister’s guard detail.”  
“I’ll let them know once we rendezvous,” Inaho said, meaning _if you make it back in time_ , and failed to wait for Marito to dismiss the call first. Sucking his teeth, Marito reached for the doctor’s abandoned coffee and poured it into his own empty mug. At least, doing Inaho’s job “watching the dead”, he would be by the ocean for a little while. Marito told Yagarai’s empty chair, “I needed a vacation anyway.” 

♥

Yagarai burst into the locker room adjacent to the meticulously scrubbed maternity wing ready for anything— almost anything. He wasn’t ready for the full height and dignity of a Vers-born noble to be drawn up and then promptly crumble in front of him. Mikhail Mazuurek, Delegate on behalf of the Empress Prime-Minister to the North African region of the new United Worlds, was alternately furious that Yagarai had taken so long and immensely grateful for his arrival. In his fretful state he did not look at all like a man who had helped to build the bridge of possibility between Earth and Mars.  
“Please, doctor,” Mazuurek said, trembling. “She’s said she’ll kill me for this.”  
“Lies,” Yagarai sighed, moving through the space to shed his unnecessary layers and activate the slow-starting sanitizing barrier. “She’s excited to have this child.”  
“I believe her,” Mazuurek said. “About both of those things.” 

Drawing a deep breath, Yagarai closed his eyes and moved forward. Mazuurek steadied himself and followed the doctor through the sanitation barrior’s glorified threshold of a “corridor” of pressurized, almost gelatinous atmosphere. On the other side they were dry and clean. Yagarai told Mazuurek as they rounded the corner, “It’s natural for you both to be nervous.”

Rayet Areash stood in the hall across from the admin station outside the room where nurses moved in and out, bringing whatever they could to help the woman inside, who had been voicing her loud opinions on pretty, curly-haired weaklings who couldn’t eat her pepper soup or experience the pain of childbirth. Mazuurek, to his credit, didn’t wilt, and moved past Areash (supposedly his military escort and bodyguard, but uninterested in the threat his young fiancée posed to his well-being ) to go to the side of his laboring love.

Kaizuka Yuki smiled reassuringly up at him. “Mikhi,” she said, and took his hand. “I won’t kill you, I shouldn’t have said so. I owe you some salt water taffy.”

Mazuurek silently gave thanks for his soon-to-be brother-in-law, whose uniquely tactical tactlessness brought him to invite Yuki to the seaside boardwalk when he desperately asked how to get to know her. Inaho had barely smiled but told Mazuurek to _try the ocean_. Mazuurek raked his hand through his curls before reaching for Yuki and gently squeezing her hand. “Next time we go to the beach, all together,” he said.

♥

Inaho arrived two hours too late to see the moment he became an uncle, breathlessly stumbling past Areash in the door and into Yuki’s room. Yuki had been saying how she would scold Inaho for a hundred years, right up until the moment he walked in. She was holding a tiny little baby with a wild curly forelock and Yuki’s own playful expression. Inaho and the baby looked at each other and both began to cry.

Her name was Umi.

Inaho had researched newborns and infants for the entirety of his sister’s pregnancy, determined that he could prepare himself to handle everything their little one could throw at him. Inaho couldn’t figure out how to get her to stop wailing. First he had cried for emotional reasons, shocked enough on his own by how complicated the feeling he had at the sight of his childish big sister as a mom. He couldn’t pretend not to be proud of her, apologized with the crying baby at his shoulder for causing trouble.

Yuki waved off Inaho’s apology, her own tired smile joining Mazuurek’s nervous giggle. Inaho reluctantly admitted he couldn’t quell the baby’s crying and handed the infant off to a nurse who returned her to her mother.

Mazuurek watched Inaho’s face burn and realized, _that warrior still is just another kid_. Yuki cooed at the child in her arms. “Bested your uncle and not even two days old,” she said, watching their daughter curl her fingers. “Little genius.” Yuki beamed. 

“She’s perfect.” Inaho and Mazuurek agreed in unison.

♥

When Inaho returned to his island of “empty cells”, Marito was eager to be back on his regular shift in his regular territory, close to Yagarai’s hospital. He needed the doctor’s reassurance more than he needed to see photos of the new person his colleagues brought into this fragile world. 

Marito grumbled something about needing a drink over Inaho’s light thanks for the reprieve from his duties. Once Marito’s footsteps and the scent of his cigarettes had faded down the hall, Inaho turned toward the only haunted cell in this ghost town.

Slaine didn’t speak as he welcomed his jailer home. Inaho put his back against the bars and held out the small stack of photos. Inaho watched Slaine’s face as he thumbed their way through pictures of Yuki’s exhausted smile, Inaho’s proud intensity and Mazuurek’s fluttering concern over the tiny child with storm grey eyes and the beginnings of a Versian’s hawkish nose. Slaine’s smile was brittle and small, tender with pain and that demon, hope.

The next generation was loved by two worlds.


	2. (flashback)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes it just works out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The NYR collection isn’t open yet and I had so much fun writing for Himmelreich that I just... I couldn’t stop myself. Here we are. I hope this little addition makes the end of your year an even happier one!

♥♥♥

Mazuurek, when Asseylum held his hands in hers and his whole being in her eyes and asked him to help her tend the wound which gaped between Earth and Mars, wept as he vowed to do his utmost to realize her hope for a healed future. Since that night Mazuurek had stood behind the Empress and supported her cause dutifully, watched and listened as she campaigned and gave speeches on Verse, helped her practice challenges and talking counterpoints, reviewed the court’s more obscure rules of debate.

“The schism between our worlds is one that cannot be resolved without striving to find our most caring answers,” Asseylum said, “In working towards our dream of New United Worlds, we must be compassionate and resolved.” She pleaded with her titled subjects to express a willingness to move forward together. She asked who would spread this hope in good-faith renewal on the plush surface of the Earth. Mazuurek, with a sweeping gesture and pride in his voice led a wave of replies. Mazuurek would quote her often doing that work to prove his good faith, before hearing all of the complaints of his his region’s residents in town hall after town hall, once he stepped forth first to answer her call to the members of the court to present themselves for consideration of this honor.

Klancain, called First Confidant to the Empire since their marriage became official, was always at her side and yet painfully aware of how much she couldn’t tell him. He watched Mazuurek use his good reputation to sway members of the court who had dismissed Klancain’s same requests as naive. Mazuurek wasn’t manipulating his connections, Klancain saw well enough by contrast to the deeply unsettling and thankfully brief moments he had spent with -- Mazuurek wasn’t like _him_ , anyway. But he wasn’t able to pass on his gift for networking or his damned likeability onto Klancain. Cruhteo, his father, had been proper and distant, a man who appeared cold but always ran hot. Klancain had inherited that, along with his constantly-churning, working mind. 

Watching Asseylum move so elegantly, carefully through emotional minefields and responsibility and self-doubt, Klancain was in awe. He saw, as First Confidant, the toll it took on her in private, but like her sister Princess Lemrina, was unable to ask to shoulder some of that burden. Loving her may have meant knowing better than to ask, knowing that she would share endlessly if she felt that she could, sensing that her deepest love would always be for _people_.

Asseylum felt like a girl and a woman, lost and found, powerless in the face of death and powerful as she held the attention of those allies in the room who had risen to her high hopes. “Futures depend upon our people being able to believe in one another and in hope,” she said. 

Mazuurek, for all his charismatic and leaderly gestures in court, was considerably more unsure of himself once he was within the Terran gravity well, returning to his landing castle to address his own impact on the people there and make attempts toward reparatory overtures. His castle had been under guard -- not by his own people -- to protect it from scrappers and vandals, though its own system was quite capable enough. The followers whose loyalty Mazuurek had earned during years in school and in Versian skirmishes over supply routes and dry riverbeds hadn’t taken well to the idea of Terran military oversight, but an end to intrasolar wars was all any sane person could be wishing for, surely. Surely.

♥

Marito lit and drew in a long drag from a crumpled cigarette he’d been carrying in his pocket all day. Yagarai had been more insistent lately that Marito try to quit but wouldn’t admit it was because nobody likes a doctor addicted to nicotine and misery loves company. No matter how much Marito pestered him about it. How Souma managed to be more stubborn than he was, Kouichirou never did figure out. The tip of his cigarette glowed brightly before crumbling into white ash.

“That stinks, sir, have some consideration,” Yuki said, waving a trail of greyish smoke away from her as she popped the last of her sandwich (like, a whole half the sandwich) into her mouth. “I’m trynna eat.”

“I’m outside,” Marito protested flicking his ash. “I’m ten meters from the door.”

Rayet Areash emerged to the landing’s shuttle pad with a stack of paper cups and a thermos. “Aren’t you two done yet?” she asked, making Yuki cough around crumbs. Pouring the hot contents of the thermos, Areash distributed three cups of ration-standard gritty instant coffee. 

“I’m done, but my assignment isn’t over,” Yuki said, not fooling anyone with so much warmth in her voice. Areash had decided a long time ago that Yuki and Inaho shared a stubborn streak that didn’t include much patience for anything they didn’t _really_ want to be doing. Areash drank slowly and watched the shifting lights in the sky.

Marito drained his cup and scoffed, “You’re too young to be _done_ ,” he said, meaning _tired_ , and sucking down a third of his cigarette’s remaining length before exhaling a chuckle like gravel under tank treads. 

Mazuurek’s first meeting with his Terran guard was a nerve-wracking relief, a wash of complicated feelings knowing his escort was comprised of soldiers who had bested him, arrested him, and then requested of him an alliance for Asseylum’s sake. Areash would never admit it were for Asseylum’s sake, but as a Versian filled with rage at their people’s own folly in the war, Mazuurek felt sure he understood. 

Marito dropped the butt of his cigarette into the empty paper cup and crushed them both, tossing them casually into an incinerator as they moved in a diamond formation from rendezvous. The casual ease among the three soldiers dissipated almost as soon as Mazuurek arrived, giving him only a moment to observe and consider it before they solidified into a unit which moved around him as a phalanx. 

The landing castle, Mazuurek knew from what little communication he allowed himself with the people managing his harpoon of a home, had subsisted easily despite Terran dissidents’ attempts to cut off its access to a supply of water. A reasonable effort useless against people raised on the edge of enough. The choice on the part of the local uprising though gave Mazuurek his first gesture of good faith and this uncomfortable meeting between his humbled lordship and the people whose needs he intended to communicate to his Empress.

“We’ve received confirmation that the established water supply lines in the cities are compatible with and prepared for the Versian distillation and recollection processes to be put in place without anyone crying overreach,” Yuki read as she walked behind Marito and at Mazuurek’s left side. “There will be areas that rely entirely on natural aqueducts and springs, so please consider an approach that is less…” Yuki hesitated to say _pressing the point on managing a life-sustaining resource_ and went with, “disruptive to a community’s routine.”

Marito snorted as he held the door to the conference room. Mazuurek realized with a strange mixture of pleasure and frustration who these people were, and what it meant that they alone comprised Earth’s military escort for his diplomatic entourage. Areash stood quietly by the room’s only window, looking out. She knew it would be a very long meeting.

♥

Inaho looked up from his written reports— one an official government record of his duties as “Tactical Archivist” on the island after the conflict, the other the day’s pages of an updating letter he knew he could never send— and accepted a call. 

“Why is he like this, Nao, why do you choose people who are like this,” Yuki demanded, her face projected larger than life on the wide, white wall. Inaho felt his eyepatch shift as he met her gaze and let his jaw relax.

“Stop grinning about it,” Yuki said. “Ugh, why do you even—“

“He’s trustworthy,” Inaho said, “Prideful, diligent. Reminds me of my sister.”

“You’ve got some nerve,” she said, and disconnected the call.

Inaho didn’t look up from his writing when the next call came in. “So what recipe did you need,” Inaho asked. Yuki scowled at how calm Nao was, the way she always did. He enjoyed it for a long moment.

Yuki said, “He wants to feed like hundreds of people at a time, at every one of these things. He wants to serve and eat together. We had rations during meeting and he lost his mind over the ingredients, Nao— he, he stuffed his cheeks like a little hamster, he was so excited.” She sighed. “He’s irritating.”

“So even if _you_ cook for him, it won’t necessarily go badly,” Inaho said, as though he had absolutely no taste. “Help make something everyone there eats every day. Comfort food is better in times like this.”

Yuki said, “I miss your rolled omelette.”

“Injera and pepper stew,” Inaho advised. “You’re strong with spicy things, so you’ll be fine.”

Once the call was over, Slaine emerged from the blanketed cot in his cell with a stretch and allowed himself to ask for yet another undeserved kindness. He said to the back of Inaho’s rumpled uniform shirt, “I’d like to try your rolled omelettes, too.”

♥

“He’s been,” Yagarai looked from Yuki’s anxious pallor to the sunburn bristling across Marito’s cheeks and cleared his throat. “Very slightly poisoned. He shouldn’t have that much capsaicin again, but he’ll be fine.”

Yuki groaned. Of course, nearly a month into their trek across the desert, and Mazuurek— that adorable, well-intentioned idiot— had to go and try her way of eating it. He’d been bonding shockingly well with practically everyone else along his goodwill campaign that way. Marito clapped a hand against Yuki’s back in a way that was not at all comforting.

“Well,” Areash said, a devil of a smirk flashing in her eyes, “ _I_ might be starting to feel a little good will after all this.”

“It was delicious, I would do it again,” Mazuurek said weakly, eliciting an immediate scoff and sigh from Marito and Yagarai respectively.

“Mikhi!” Yuki hissed. “This is why we can’t leave you anywhere!”

Mikhail gaped at her. Never had anyone shortened his name. “Well, I don’t want you to leave,” he blurted. “I’m quite taken with you.”

Rayet said dryly, “I take it back.”

♥

Yuki sent Inaho a photo— herself by the shore in the sun with a candied Apple next to Mazuurek mid-sentence with a mouthful of saltwater taffy, captioned lovingly: _This day is your fault somehow._


End file.
